But in a surprise announcement yesterday, the company announced that after a year of preliminary work, including investing several million kroner in archaeological investigations of the site, it had decided not to go ahead.

Expanding in Ireland
In a mail the company said: “Despite the many obvious advantages – amongst which are advantageous access to high-speed fibre networks, sustainable energy as well as strong support from Esbjerg Municipality – we’ve had to conclude that all in all the site is not the right one for our next data centre in Europe,” DR Nyheder reports.

Facebook already has a data centre underway in Odense and had earlier announced that it would expand it centre in Clonee in Ireland, but according to the company’s head of communications in the Nordics, this had no direct bearing on the decision.